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Irritable and Inflexible

NOTICE: The following posts are taken from the Christian Special Needs parenting List. The names, e-mail addresses and locations of all parties involved have been removed to protect their privacy. The posts have been used with permission, but are copyrighted by Christian Kind.

I have never posted before but could use some advice on my 71/2 year old daughter. She has been diagnosed with ADHD and some ODD. I believe the ODD is predominant. We have used meds on and off but she won't swallow pills yet so our selection is limited. They tend to make her even moodier in the evening. She has an easier time at school, making straight A's and fairly good conduct mostly. However, home is much different. She is irritable, easily angered, has to do things her way, "undoes" something if I have already done it (this is the most frustrating, time consuming and argument provoking thing), doesn't follow directions and rarely does anything the first time she is asked. I could mention more but we can start there...She just often seems so stressed. I sometimes want to take a break and just lay off but then things get too out of hand.

We are working on a behavorial contract but I am having a hard time coming up with the punishment if she doesn't follow the deal. Spanking doesn't seem to work. We have rewarded with marbles that turn into money for her at the end of the week. We have cleaned out her room quite a bit to avoid any distractions. It is mostly her attitude and I struggle with how to modify, encourage and punish for that. A good example, I pick her up from after school childcare (I work full time) and took her to the store to buy soccer shoes. She HAD to be the one to get them off the shelf, she HAD to pick it herself (nevermind that there were only three girls soccer shoe choices). This continued on so that my husband took her to the bathroom and spanked her. We finally made it out of there with some shoes, but not without a fight. Mind you, playing soccer is something she wanted to do and wearing the uniform goes right along with it. What do you do in this situation? This could easily be our morning, our evening, our anything!! Please help!

Do any of your children struggle with low blood sugar? I am wondering if this is some of the problem. Her after school program only offers a small snack and I pick her up in the late afternoon she is often hungry and irritable.

Any suggestions for high protein snack foods that don't have peanut butter?

We find that rewards and positive reinforcement work way better than punishment for our 7 1/2 yr old boy. As to the ODD, I say that ours was born to be king. The way he learned something or saw something done the first time is THE right way to do it. But we saw this way back when he was a toddler and so we have years of "There is more than one way to do something" tucked under our belts.

We have just started giving ours an allowance for chores. He gets a chart (which is just finally starting to work) and he checks off things as he does them. On Saturday he gets paid and we may make a trip to BiMart or the feed store for toys or whatever. He likes to shop, so knowing how much what he "wants" costs, helps him to save up for it. If the dogs are whining and I say, "It's time to feed the dogs." I give him a few minutes to work it into his schedule, but if he takes too long, I will say, "I"m feeding the dogs now" which translates to, he loses the opportunity to do a chore and therefore the money for doing it, and usually he will do it immediately.

As to the demanding to get her own way. We try to be flexible, find the positive spin on things and ignore as much as possible. Sometimes we have to pack up and go home. Other times it's a compromise. We live in a small town (4000 give or take) and so he has a lot of freedom that he would not have in a town of 100,000. He gets to go look at the toy isle while I do my shopping (5 minutes tops). Most of our trips we don't get to buy things he wants. If he makes a fuss, he misses out on the next trip. We try to let him do as much as he wants his way, but we do not let him bully (he would be a bully too, if we would let him, as he is big and domineering). We work hard on taking turns at home (games are good for this) and are learning the golden rule, which is helping learn to see things from others' perspectives.

When bad attitudes come up, I will sometimes ask, in a non-emotional way, "Can you think of a better way to express that?" or maybe a more respectful way, or something keyed to how he asked. The worst thing we can do is react in kind to his emotional state. He often seems to ignore me when I ask something and I have to prompt "Yes, Mommy" to get him to answer. Then sometimes he will ask me something and I will not answer, and he will ask again and again, and finally I will say, "I heard you the first time. But you did not know because I didn't answer. How does that make you feel? That's how I feel when you don't answer me." Just stuff like that. Sometimes we act out his little dramas so he can see how silly he looks making a big deal out of something. We don't do this often, and we do it in good humor, not in a mean way. I think sometimes they don't understand how overly dramatic they are being about things....

your daughter sounds a lot like mine. She gets me at my wits end a lot! I find myself praying before I wake her up, after I wake her up, and while I'm trying to get her out of the house. I contributed a lot of her irritablility and lack of listening to my directions to her not having a solid relationship with her dad.

I am raising her and my other daughter (6 1/2) by myself and she really doesn't have a male figure in her life. But now I'm starting to think this is part of her personality. I also try spanking as a last resort after say a failed time out or several warnings. I've found that she hates time out more than spanking. Making her sit in a corner and not move or talk is worst than anything for her.

I also don't give her a lot of time to make decisions. For example with picking out things. I'll tell her she has ___ min. to pick something out. When that time gets closer I'll tell her you have 2 more min. left to pick something or A. I'll pick it out or B. You won't get anything. Sometimes this works other times she'll try to make a fuss and then I'll ignore her and move to another isle with her stomping behind me.

I know we want to give them the benefit of the doubt but sometimes our children other are too wound up or too tired after a long day to do things like that. Not to mention being in a store for a large period of time.

Okay, here goes ~ My son is wonderful, don't get me wrong, but it seems like we have an arguement over everything - from getting up in the morning, going to school, making dinner, me spending some me time and him spending him time - I don't care for his friends (bad influence re: language and morals) - and especially his winding up at night instead of winding down. I'm just sooooo frustrated - any suggestions??

The friend thing is huge. Pick your battles, but I would definitely pick that one as one of mine. The family that used to live across the street from me growing up (I babysat their kids), the oldest boy got involved in a bad crowd and his mom was concerned, but she was counseled to let him make his own decisions in that regard. One night the group of them and the younger brother, went to a local convenience store, killed one clerk and nearly killed the other. The two friends are still in jail (for life) and the oldest son is now out, having spent the reaminder of his teens and most of his twenties in jail. THe younger son was just along for the ride, and wasn't part of the plotting, so he got counseling and is now a corrections officer in another state. The language thing you might be able to overlook, but not the morals. For sure they need to follow YOUR house rules when they are at your house, regarding both language and morals. And your son needs to know that you expect him to demonstrate your values at their houses and in public...if not, there needs to be repercussions (i.e. grounded from those friends).

In proverbs (don't know which verse off the top of my head) it talks about bad friends corrupting a good child, and not the other way around. It CAN work the other way, but that is not the norm.

James Dobson, in Raising Boys, talks about boys starting to need to have responsibility in the early teens, learning to be men. Perhaps part of his rebellion is the yearning to have responsibility, but not having any. Talk about this kind of stuff. For example, if it's his job to take out the garbage, when it starts overflowing, don't do it for him, let him live with the ramifications of it. If he won't get up, he will have to be late for school. When our daughter was that age, we had these same issues (not the bad friends one, though) and one wise mom told me to let her live with the consequences. For her, the consequence of not getting ready for ballet on time was that he was late and had to sit out of class...She was only late once, and after that it was "Hurry up, Mom, let's go!!" Sounds like he needs to start taking responsibility for his actions.

if you are a working mom and he misses school because he won't get up, perhaps you can "hire" a nanny for that day (maybe some older woman from church would be willing to help?). Staying home from school means all the chores get done, vacuuming, cleaning the bathrooms, laundry, etc. No tv, no naps, no video games, no phone, no friends, no extracurricular activities...and if the work doesn't get done, no dinner (it's Biblical "If a man will not work, neither shall he eat."...I think it's in Acts). Make going to school the least offensive of his choices.....